Thus begins the downward spiral of the film’s narrative trajectory, which takes place over a single day and is fueled by parental grief and anger and a police system that is so fundamentally crooked that the first order of business is always protecting the officers, rather than ensuring that justice is served (the theme of institutionalized corruption is also at the heart of Bykov’s follow-up film, 2014’s The Fool). There is no ambiguity regarding the accident: Sergey was speeding and driving recklessly and the death of the boy is clearly his fault. Yet, when the other police officers arrive, led by Detective Pasha (Yuriy Bykov), a cover-up begins to make it appear that Irina lost control of her child and is therefore at fault. Evidence is falsified (the skid marks are measured incorrectly to hide the fact that he was speeding) and Irina is served alcohol by a police officer and then given a blood-alcohol test. Later, under the direction of the grim, imposing police chief Pankratov (Boris Nevzorov), Irina is physically coerced by Pasha into signing a document saying that she was at fault, while her helpless husband (Dmitry Kulichkov) looks on.

In the tradition of all meaningful morality plays, our emotions are conflicted in that we feel for Sergey, who is presented as a seemingly decent man who made a mistake, albeit one that took the life of an innocent, and also for Irina, who is distraught at both the sudden, violent death of her son and the obviousness with which she is forced into the position of assuming fault. There is no justice, only obstruction and false blame, which intensifies her sense of loss and anger. Pasha stands somewhere in the middle: He is clearly a man for whom manipulating the system is an mundane activity of great familiarity, yet Bykov plays him in such a way that we sense the weight of his collective decisions bearing down on him even as he insists that there is no other way. What he does is evil, but he goes about it with a sense of pragmatism that isn’t quite enough to fully quell his inner demons. Corrupt though he may be, he is also a pawn of those who wield true power and have no qualms about outright murdering people if it means protecting the police force and hiding its transgressions. At one point, a character threatens to expose the dirty deeds of a roomful of officers, none of whom mount a challenge because they are all guilty of something.

Midway through The Major begins to shift in a new direction when Irina’s husband takes matters into his own desperate hands, initiating an escalating game of violence that eventually forces Sergey to turn against the police force and join with Irina. As it turns out, his sense of morality is stronger than his desire for self-preservation, which threatens all of those who have already conspired to protect him. Thus, the film conveys in no uncertain terms how police corruption weaves a tangled web of lies and violence that cannot be unraveled because too many people risk exposure. Without going outside the law he is supposed to uphold, Sergey cannot act on his own conscience. He becomes a target like all the others.

Bykov guides The Major’s twisted moral path with a sense of grim assuredness. Despite playing in competition during the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, it has gotten little attention outside of Europe, which is a shame because Bykov is clearly a Robert Rodriguez-style multi-hyphenate talent with great potential (in addition to writing, directing, and acting in the film, he also scored and edited it). The film is suffused with a heavy sense of fatalism, and even though we feel that nothing will turn out well, it remains tremendously engaging until the final frames. The frozen landscape, beautifully captured by cinematographer Kirill Klepalov, suggests a moral wasteland where power trumps all and little people like Irina are doomed to be crushed under a system whose primary goal is to perpetuate itself. There is no sense of salvation in The Major, even as Sergey turns a moral corner and takes responsibility for his actions, because in a system this corrupt, the myth of the lone hero bringing justice is nothing but a fanciful lie.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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